


Watch Me (While I Come Alive)

by Vashti (tvashti)



Series: Watch Me [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tin Man (2007)
Genre: 2015 Twisted Shorts Ficathon, Crossover, Gen, Gen Work, Life in Exile, Women Learning to be Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8101489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvashti/pseuds/Vashti
Summary: "I can feel my heart beating with within; finally I'm breathing again." Avalon





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Twisting the Hellmouth 2015 Twisted Shorts Ficathon.

Azkadellia is sitting on the floor of the place they’ve turned into their studio. It was one of the long term projects Oz had suggested early into the princess’ imprisonment, although it had taken several visits from her father and his desire to reconnect with the beloved child he had lost to sorcery and politics to get it off the ground. They’d done it nearly all by hand, the three of them (though DG had tightened and smoothed some things to improve acoustics at Oz’s prompting). It had given Azkadellia something to look forward to every day. 

It had also helped humanize her to the people. Between Oz and the Consort, they only knew so much about construction. Azkadellia knew nothing at all about laboring with her hands. But they had all been willing to learn, and Ahamo had the ability to find them skilled tradespeople to teach them. 

Even Oz had been surprised by the intensity of the princess’ focus and desire to learn. She listened intently to given instructions, asked intelligent and thoughtful questions, and never tried to make it seem that she knew better than the their teacher for the day after only a few hours of instruction. Even their most reluctant teachers couldn’t deny that she was an excellent student. It wasn’t uncommon for many of them to forget that she was a princess of the realm altogether. (It helped that she had thrown off the physical trappings of her station long before, cutting her hair into a short style that hovered around the curve of her skull and followed the line of her jaw. She looked very little like the princess Oz had met after he’d joined the Royal Guard.)

More than once, Oz caught the Consort watching his daughter from afar during his visits to her Summer Palace/Prison. “There’s my Az.” Whether she ever heard him or not, Oz didn’t know. 

What he did know was that the princess seemed lighter on those days when her father was around to watch her absorb skills like a sponge. Her face glowed from more than just sweat as she showed him the progress she was making, first at building her skills, then later at applying them, and finally at the progress being made to the studio itself during the Consort’s absence. 

On those days when her father was there, she slept as well or better than when Oz pulled out his guitar and played her nightmares away. During one fateful evening with her father in temporary residence, Ahamo asked to borrow Oz’s guitar after their dinner. He then began to play a tune Oz didn’t know.

“Hmm, I guess I learned it on this side,” Ahamo had said. “I’ve been here so long that it’s hard to remember where or when I picked up some of the old stuff.” Glancing up at Oz for a moment, lips quirked, he said, “I wasn’t much older than you are when the travel storm caught me.”

Though she’d been standing by the floor to ceiling windows, and he and Ahamo were some feet away on a rug by the dead fireplace, Oz had sensed Azkadellia’s new interest in the conversation. 

“I’m twenty-seven."

“All right," Ahamo had said, chuckling, “All right, so I was somewhat younger." He hadn’t raised his head again though Oz felt Azkadellia’s interest more strongly. 

“How old were you, You Highness?"

The Consort had still been trying to hum the song, having stopped and started over again several times. Looking up, he’d let his fingers wander off somewhere else as he said, “About twenty-two years old, if I remember right. But I wasn’t always so good at keeping up with the proper date at that time of my life."   
Understanding, Oz had grunted, the nod of his head turning into a gentle full body rocking motion as Ahamo returned to the song he was trying to remember. 

“Do you remember this one, Az?” Ahamo had said, raising his head. “I seem to remember playing it for you when you were little.”

She’d been wandering closer as Oz and the Consort spoke. Oz had been tracking the whisper of her bare feet and pale skin moving against cool stone and lightweight skirts. “I think so.”

Approaching them in earnest, she had sat herself in a bright aqua blue wingback and pulled up her feet.

“Then maybe you know the rest…” the Consort had said. And he’d segued smoothly into the beginning again, humming as he went. Az’s voice had flitted over his after a moment, as if scared to touch it, even as she pushed the song further along than her father had been able to. 

Ahamo had dropped out long enough to say, “You’ve got it. You don’t remember the words do you?” And he’d moved back to the beginning again without waiting for an answer.

This time hesitant words had overlaid themselves on her father’s more confident humming, until Ahamo joined in the actual singing. And they’d kept going.

Oz had sat at their feet—faithful friend, retainer, coconspirator, and bodyguard—entranced by the light mirrored on their faces. He’d seen it before. DG looked at her sister that way and often. The Queen had as well. He’d never, however, seen it reflected back on Azkadellia’s face, hiding in plain sight as she did.

She’d spent the next day writing. And every day after, when they weren’t working on the studio.

In Oz’s hand he holds an invitation. An invitation to leave the palace for her sister’s royal coronation in Central City. Her first invitation to leave their Summer Prison/Palace in more than eight years. They (she) hadn’t even been allowed to leave for the Queen’s funeral. (Instead it had begun there with a small private service for the family, in the palace that held their best and worst memories, then slowly processed through the OZ from there.)

Azkadellia’s exile was over.

It was time to pick a name for the band.

[Fin]


End file.
